Bank of Montreal (BMO) has invested $1 million to move to a larger branch at Oakridge Centre – a bank that will be the first in Canada to have an automated teller machine (ATM) that doles out U.S. dollars, British pounds, Euros, Mexican pesos and Canadian dollars.
The Thomas Cook ATM will be like some other Thomas Cook ATMs, which also provide foreign currency, at airports.
Transactions will be considered to be from a different bank than BMO and therefore have a $1.50 fee, unless customers have a special account that waives fees, said BMO spokeswoman Laurie Grant.
“It takes funds from your Canadian dollar account,” she told Business in Vancouver August 29. “It can’t take funds from a U.S. dollar account. If you get British pounds, it will convert that from funds in your Canadian dollar account.”
BMO previously operated a small location inside Oakridge’s Safeway. It opened in its much larger stand-alone location earlier this month.
Grant said her bank (TSX:BMO) chose the Oakridge location to test-market the new ATM because the location was one of the busiest and most profitable in Canada when it operated at Safeway.
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: GlenKorstrom